The Human Division gets serialized and serious about experimentation

John Scalzi explains why he had to publish his latest novel as a serial first.

John Scalzi broke into the science fiction mainstream when his novel Old Man’s War was published in 2005. Since then, he’s become a bit of an icon in the industry. He's published three more books in what's become the Old Man's War series, which tells the story of the human race struggling to survive in a universe inhabited by interplanetary species.

Earlier this year, Tor Books began publishing The Human Division, the latest in the Old Man's War series. Rather than publish the novel in the conventional way, though, Scalzi and Tor opted to publish it as a series of weekly installments. Each week, one of 16 chapters is released as an e-book (but not in print). Later this year, Tor will publish the book in hardcover and in compiled e-book form.

Ars spoke to author John Scalzi to ask why he's re-visiting the universe of Old Man’s War as a serial.

Zoe's Tale, the last story in the Old Man's War saga, was published in 2008 and Scalzi says he had to take a break from the series' world. In the years since, he has published other popular books like Redshirts. He found that when he returned to the universe he had created in Old Man’s War, things had changed a bit.

“I asked myself, how do I proceed from Zoe’s Tale?” Scalzi said. “I felt a lot of pressure. When I came back in to write The Human Division, I got to do it on terms that were interesting to me. I think of it like software. With this release, the code, the story, is more robust. I have had a lot of time to think about implications and characters. I am not reliant just on John Perry [a main character] to answer these questions. It’s more interesting for readers, because we get to see more of the after-effects of first trilogy. It’s more cinematic, and it provides a wide angle lens of the universe.“

Serials are not new to publishing, but the form is experiencing a bit of resurgence today. Many publishers are serializing e-books now that users can wirelessly receive the latest chapters when they sign up for subscriptions to content. Scalzi didn’t think his audience would mind. In fact, based on their media buying habits, he figured his audience might embrace it.

“Everyone grows up with serialized forms,” Scalzi said. “In books, and sci-fi and fantasy especially, the elemental unit of type of serialization is a trilogy. These days people want more than one book to get into the story. This is true even in video games. For example, Half Life was the first game I was happy to ‘re-read.’ And then there was Half-Life 2.“

Indeed, Scalzi is able to take some unusual chances by serializing The Human Division. Some of the weekly chapters follow main characters, but in others readers are treated to some of the smaller storylines. In The Human Division's second installment, "Walk the Plank," Scalzi tells the story using a transcript of a one-act play, breaking some of the conventions of format.

Scalzi is quick to point out that not only is The Human Division serialized, but it’s also DRM-free (Tor made all its titles DRM-free in 2012). Scalzi sees this type of broadening of platform as a way to evolve beyond traditional publishing.

“Today, publishing is where film was in the 60s and 70s," Scalzi said. "The studio system had collapsed. All the things that worked before—musicals, Rock Hudson movies—they weren’t working anymore. At that point, studios were throwing stuff to see what stuck. And then there were new films that broke new ground like Easy Rider, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and they were innovative. The industry had no choice but to follow after what they did. In publishing we are at the same place as movies were back then. We’re trying the episodic thing because readers are interested in works that are shorter that they can read on the subway, at lunch. It also lowers the prices of the material. 99 cents for story? Okay. [I make] more money now from short stories than I made in the ten years [previous]. What you see is a ground-breaking in types of story telling.”

Scalzi worked with Tor directly to help shape the course of this experiment in e-books and final print pieces. “I sat down with Tor, [to figure out] what we wanted to do to take advantage of e-books," he said. "[We asked] what can we do that is native to digital and e-books that we couldn’t have done before? Can’t do it in print, cost is too prohibitive. So, The Human Division was born and built to be digital. We worked on how it would be in hardcover as well, but we wanted to see what we could gain by going this route. This is an experiment. Let’s try this, see if it works, [see] what we can learn, and whether it’s a model that makes sense going forward.”

In the meantime, users can join in the experimentation as The Human Division unfolds over the next few weeks. The hardcover version will be published May 15.

“My first book on the Internet was shareware in 1999,” Scalzi said. “Doing something like this is not new to me, but we wanted to see what is new that is native to digital and e-books that couldn’t be done before in print. Can’t do this in print.“

Promoted Comments

Could Mr Scalzi explain why his "serial" is $0.99 per episode for US readers and $3.71 per episode for the rest of the world? (except UK where I don't know the prices because amazon.co.uk won't show them to me).

According to the results fetched by Calibre, the UK Kindle price is £.64 per chapter. *edit: forgot what I was originally going to post!*

I picked up Old Man's War in the Humble eBook Bundle and it was pretty good. Some cliche and wish-fulfillment stuff, but it was still a compelling read in an original setting and written so that you can't put it down. Easily recommendable. Scalzi has also written up some posts exploring what the HeB sale meant for him, how he thinks publishing should adapt to ebooks, and so on. This is a guy that "gets" publishing in the internet age. Take a look at his thoughts coming off of the HeB sale. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/10/24/h ... st-mortem/http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/10/24/t ... d-authors/

Cesar Torres
Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader technology. Cesar lives in New York City. Emailcesar.torres@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Urraca

45 Reader Comments

Could Mr Scalzi explain why his "serial" is $0.99 per episode for US readers and $3.71 per episode for the rest of the world? (except UK where I don't know the prices because amazon.co.uk won't show them to me).

For what it is worth, I decided to wait for the collection when that comes out. It is likely to be much cheaper. I then had a look at Audible, and see that the episodes are 99c US there, and 69c for members. I am getting my episodes that way now, not even bothering to use my credits.

Scalzi addresses this in his blog as well. Some of the episodes are longer than others with the first one being what he calls double length. Good for him in trying to revive the serial method and seeing if it will work in the digital age. I for one will be waiting until I can get all the chapters in one complete (bound) package, guess I'm just like the feel of a book in my hands over an e-reader

Second one is really 32 pages, not 20. Given that, first part is 93 pages, so more like a triple length.

I for one bought the first three episodes and haven't had the time to read #3 because of other things I'm reading (I got a lot of Christmas wordswag, Redshirts being among them). I'm pondering just waiting it out and buying the hardcover because, for pleasure reading, there's nothing that beats a printed book in my hands.

I'm not editorializing here against epub, I'm just happy with printed books until such a time an ereader that I like comes out. After all, I did say that I bought the first 3. Well, actually, I signed up for the Tor newsletter so I got #1 for free, bought #2 from Google, and #3 from Kobo. Google was DRM'd at first but they've fixed it since then, and Kobo had it right from the start. My phone, however, makes a horribe reading device and I'm just not quite happy with buying either eink technology I'm not entirely happy with or getting a "color" reader which is really just a horribly underpowered tablet.